Why We Cook Twelve Courses

Twelve courses are not a number for us. They are a rhythm.

A long menu is often misunderstood. Many people think first of quantity, luxury, formality, or an evening designed to impress. For us, a 12-course menu means something else.

It is not a demonstration of excess. It is a way of building an idea slowly.

At Criss Studio, we do not cook twelve courses because twelve is a particularly grand or representative number. We cook them because some stories need space. Because a single dish can sometimes be one sentence — and a menu can become the whole language.

Our cooking grows from two deeply personal perspectives: the Polish and Jamaican roots of Mateusz A. Żurek and Jahmarley Grant. Around them are memories, migration, products, techniques, music, art, Hamburg, the seasons, and the question of how all of this can taste on a plate without needing to be explained before it is experienced.

A 12-course menu allows us to tell these things not loudly, but in layers. Through broths, bread, smoke, acidity, heat, fermentation, sweetness, bitterness, softness and tension.

A menu is not a catalogue

For us, a menu is not a list of dishes. It is a dramaturgy.

The beginning should awaken curiosity, but not reveal everything. The first courses should open the room: a flavour, a texture, a temperature, a small break from expectation. After that, the menu can go deeper. It can become warmer, denser, more personal. It can work with contrast, with memory, with something unfamiliar that suddenly tastes completely natural.

Twelve courses only work if every course has a reason.

A dish cannot exist only because it looks beautiful. An intermediate course cannot simply fill space. A dessert cannot just be sweet because sweetness is expected at the end. In a long menu, every unnecessary moment becomes visible. Anything that does not create tension takes strength away from the evening.

That is why, for us, a 12-course menu does not mean more. It means more precise.

Small portions. Clear decisions. No routine. No luxury for the sake of luxury. Flavour has to remain more important than decoration. Meaning more important than effect. Culture more important than cliché.

Why twelve courses can feel light

One of the most common misunderstandings about long menus is that they must be heavy. That you leave exhausted. That twelve courses automatically mean indulgence or excess.

The opposite should be true.

A good long menu does not work through mass, but through rhythm. It needs breath. One course can be intense if the next one opens it again. Fat needs acidity. Smoke needs freshness. Heat needs precision. A dense moment may need something bright afterwards. A very personal dish may need a moment of silence after it.

We think a lot about how an evening feels in the body. Not only in the mind. Not only in photographs.

At the end, you should feel fulfilled, not overwhelmed. Awake, not tired. Enough should have happened for the evening to stay with you — but not so much that the memory becomes blurred.

Polish-Jamaican is not a theme for us. It is our foundation.

When we say that Criss Studio cooks Polish-Jamaican food, we do not mean fusion in a superficial sense. It is not about placing two cuisines next to each other or combining familiar symbols.

t is about origin as a language.

A dish can begin with a Polish memory and end with Jamaican heat. Or the other way around. It can come from a family flavour, a market, a childhood moment, a misunderstanding, a name, a soup, a sandwich, a fruit, a bread.

Sometimes the reference is clear. Sometimes it sits deeper.

Our Signature Jamaican Żurek is a good example. Żurek is not only a Polish soup. It is also Mateusz’ surname. In our version, fermented rye meets coconut milk, Scotch Bonnet, allspice, smoke and memory. The dish does not work because it wants to be “creative.” It works because, for us, it feels necessary.

That is exactly why we sometimes need a long menu: so that dishes like this do not stand alone, but become part of a larger conversation.

Pairing, room and art are part of the evening

For us, a 12-course menu does not end at the edge of the plate.

The beverage pairing is not an addition. It is part of the story. Wine, sake, ferments, infusions and non-alcoholic pairings can calm a dish, open it, sharpen it or move it in another direction. Sometimes a sake brings more quietness to a dish than wine. Sometimes an infusion is more precise than alcohol. Sometimes a plate does not need more power, but more air.

The room also changes the food.

Since opening, we have used the walls of our dining room for rotating artists. Not as decoration, but as part of the atmosphere. Each season brings not only a new menu, but also a new visual language. For us, this belongs together: food, art, light, music, service, conversation.

An evening in a restaurant is never only taste. It is perception.

Service is choreography, but not a show

With twelve courses, service becomes especially important. Not as stiff formality. Not as theatre. But as a feeling for timing.

A table should never feel rushed. But the evening should not stand still either. Explanations should help, not dominate. Sometimes it is better to explain a dish after it has been eaten. Sometimes a guest should taste first, before knowing why something is there.

We like that moment when a dish is not immediately decoded.

Fine dining does not have to feel distant. It can be precise and still warm. Focused and still personal. Ambitious without excluding anyone who arrives with genuine curiosity.

Who a long evening with us is for

A 12-course menu is not the right choice for every evening. And that is completely fine.

Sometimes you want to eat spontaneously. Sometimes you want to eat quickly. Sometimes you simply want to order a favourite dish and not be surprised. There are wonderful places for that.

Criss Studio is made for evenings when you want to take your time. For guests who bring trust to the kitchen. For people who do not only consume flavour, but read it. Who want to notice how acidity changes a course, how smoke creates memory, how a small amount of heat shifts an entire plate, or how a bread can say more than just “bread.”

It does not have to be a birthday. Or an anniversary. Or a grand occasion.

Sometimes the wish for an evening with substance is enough.

What should remain after twelve courses

At the end of a menu, we are not interested only in whether every plate impressed on its own. That would not be enough.

We are interested in whether the evening remains as a whole.

Whether a flavour returns later when you think about it. Whether a course triggered something you could not immediately name. Whether Polish and Jamaican roots were not understood as a concept, but felt as an attitude. Whether the room, the art, the drinks, the pace and the conversation spoke the same language for a few hours.

Twelve courses are not our way of appearing bigger.

They are our way of telling more precisely.